Flyers take advantage of slumping Maple Leafs

By ROB PARENT, 21st Century Media

Friday, March 28, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — For the third straight game the Flyers couldn’t seem to completely shake some doldrums. This time, that wouldn’t matter, since no team is on a downer quite like the one the Toronto Maple Leafs are experiencing.

So a quick power play goal by Vinny Lecavalier would get the Flyers one step ahead, a pace they kept up for much of the night as they eventually walked away with a 4-2 victory over the Maple Leafs.

It was the seventh consecutive defeat for the Leafs (36-31-8, 80 points), who three weeks ago handed the Flyers a loss in Toronto that seemed put the Leafs in a rock-solid position for the playoffs.

Not so now. Toronto is 10th and sinking due to a bullet called lack of effort.

The Flyers (39-27-7, 85 points) came in having lost two games in a row, and though they weren’t as dormant as they’d been in New York two nights earlier, they did have way too many lost connections on the attack and more than their share of defensive zone sloppiness.

The Leafs just couldn’t seem to capitalize well enough.

Lecavalier’s goal came with him in an odd place. Demoted before the game to a fourth line, he was inserted in Jake Voracek’s spot on the first power play unit. So Claude Giroux won a faceoff and Kimmo Timonen placed the puck on a tee and Lecavalier blasted it past Jonathan Bernier 5:35 into the game for 1-0.

The sharpest part of the Flyers’ game, as usual, was their penalty kill. And though the offense stopped working midway through the first period, that special team worked to great effect at period’s end to maintain the lead.

But just four seconds into the second, former Flyer James van Riemsdyk scored off a brilliant play. It was a give-and-go off the opening faceoff of the period, JVR blowing past defenseman Braydon Coburn to tie an NHL record for fastest goal in a period.

It also tied the game 1-1. Afterward, Steve Mason was forced to be semi-brilliant to hold that lead, until Kimmo Timonen flipped a shot toward the net that Scott Hartnell reached out and touched. The puck deflected past Bernier for a 2-1 Philly lead.

Once again, it would be up the Flyers’ penalty killers to hold the lead in the final couple of minutes of the period, and that it did.

Finally, the Flyers’ forechecking efforts that had been so lacking were turned up in the third period. And for the first time all game Bernier was under fire.

So Claude Giroux scored his 25th goal of the season off a Hartnell assist at 4:55 for a 3-1 lead. Then, after Dave Bolland got the Leafs back to within a goal, Wayne Simmonds found a loose puck in the slot at the 12:49 mark and restored the Flyers’ two-goal lead.